Bo vs math is always my favorite debate

Bo probably loves the total putts statistic too

doing something athletic on an injured muscle is like driving a car with a flat tire. you can do it, but you will eventually hurt yourself worse. just going slow or taking it easy isn't good enough. it's best to stay off the muscle completely and let it heal.

outside of taking a jab at BO for whatever reason, are you saying that you agree with all the stuff ARC is saying about "at any skill level, par 5s are easier" etc?

Here is a question. When you are putting, are you thinking 100% of the time I want to make this putt, or are you thinking get it close, so I can tap it in. I wonder if I tried to actually put the ball in the hole more if my scores would go up or down.

Any putt I have within a decent makeable distance I usually say out loud something like 'Come on, I can get this!' If it is a difficult longer putt I usually say out loud something like 'No more than 2!', but in my mind I am still thinking I can make it in 1. Win, win imo!

I sometimes play pitch and putt courses with my wife and family and I guess my wife scores anything from a 3 to a 7 on a hole normally (60-120 yard holes) and she can't play golf much at all. I would expect her to be scoring double figures most of the time on a proper par 5, especially if there were any hazards in the way.

In stroke play you want to minimize your expected number of strokes. So if it's an uphill putt and you ram in 4 feet past leaving a tricky downhill putt then the % of time you one putt needs to be > 3-putts.

So if you one putt 10% of the time with the aggressive stroke and 3 putt 18% (1 out of 5 that you miss from the remaining 4 feet then you may want to consider a line/speed that has an overall lower expected number of strokes.

So like many answers in life, IMO, it depends on the situation.

I'm a 10 hcp and not a very good putter. I think 3 putts hurt my state of mind (and score) and I try to limit them.

I was always better on par 5s than par 3s when I first started playing real courses, but I hit the ball pretty damn straight and not far enough to get into much trouble.

Variance: I had been hitting golf balls almost daily for 4 years at this point and was a 9 year old playing from the red tees. This was in the pre-Tiger area and my dad either lied to me or a lot of courses really did have a rule that kids under 10 were not allowed to play. When I turned 9 I started playing junior golf and my dad "found" a muni course with a $3 junior rate that I started playing all the time.

But does she ever practice hitting the driver? Or just pitch and putt?

If she doesn't ever play par 5s then she's really not a "golfer", as I'm using the term.

Also women and old people may not apply to my statement as many of them have legit strength/arthritis problems that probably do make par 5s hard. I will concede that. When I made my statement I guess I was picturing reasonably healthy reasonably young men and women who play par 5s regularly (ie use the driver and long irons).

Just read about this Golf Sim coming out on ps4 this summer. Looks pretty interesting!

http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2014/...ming-soon-ps4/

I guess it has been out on pc for some time now and there are over 4,000 user created courses.

Here is a mini review from reddit by someone who has played it...

"For those who may be unaware, there is early access for this game on steam (PC). I've played about 80 hours of golf and it is by far one of the best golf games I've ever played. Why?

>There are no "stats" affecting individual golfers. How you setup and swing your shot determines the outcome. Everyone is on level playing field

>There are endless amount of courses which keeps things challenging

>There are user created Tours and Tournaments.
Putting requires actual "touch"

>Draw and Fade are actually useful. You can't put spin on the ball in mid-flight like in Tiger Woods. Your spin is determined by how made draw/fade you put on your shot when you swing.

>Course Designer allows you to really create intricate courses. You can change every little aspect of a course

>Auto-pairing with friends. If you are on a course and your friend is also online, auto invites are sent requesting that you join them.

>The list goes on and on. This is one of the few games that is truly worth the money. Hell, for all the replay ability this game has and considering the fact that they don't charge you to play rounds/courses like Tiger Woods (bite me EA) this game is well worth more than what i assume will be a $59.99 price-tag. There is over 4000 user created courses for you to chose from already on the steam version and it hasn't even launched yet.

>Get this game for PC if you can and support the developers (its $34.99). I'll be buying it for PS4 as well. I promise you won't be disappointed. It takes a while to get used to the mechanics but once you "get it" the game is incredibly fun and challenging."

Sounds kinda like the old Links with better graphics and more courses. Stoked!

pretty obvious isn't it? longer hole=more real estate to get in trouble for the novice. Also the majority of par 5's anticipate a short iron shot so the greens are usually smaller and/or surrounded by various hazards.

Here's the trailer...

"Despite the feelings of most golfers, the stroke hole allocation of a course is not suppose to represent a ranking of the difficulty of the holes. Instead, it represents the ranking of the holes where a high handicapped golfer most needs a stroke in order to tie a low handicapped golfer."

went on a 108 holes in 4 day trip last week. Rough estimate has me making around 700 swings in that period of time (including pre-round range and short game time). Went to the range yesterday afternoon and had a blister form on my right ring finger within 40 swings, and it was taped...not a single problem on the marathon trip...wtf?

That said, I've always had trouble with finger joint wear when playing golf. My previous life of playing football, basketball, and baseball has resulted in several fingers that are either crooked, have joints permanently swollen due to bone fragments or numerous dislocations, and/or have calcium deposits that result in abnormal shapes.

I always tape my left index finger middle knuckle and right ring finger from nail to middle knuckle as a result. There's no way to avoid my fingers rubbing together based on the shape of my hands.

On a somewhat related (old man) note, anyone else experience right elbow pain after playing a lot? It's the tendon that rubs over the point of the elbow. Just started to flair up recently and that **** really hurts.

tl/dr: getting old sucks.

This message is hidden because A-Rod's Cousin is on your ignore list.

It's the same as tennis elbow, pretty common in golf too though.

Steep swing, or driving range mats usually give me golf elbow. Ben Gay and some Advil, and you should be good to go.

Man every time I go out it becomes more and more apparent how important shots from off the green from 0-40 yards out are. If you can hit your driver and irons reasonably well and you lag OK you should spend like 95% of your time working on the various shots around the green you'll see. And having a "stock" shot helps a ton. A while ago I was hitting pitches to a practice green and choked down a couple inches on my sand wedge and took a 9 o'clock swing and I hit 5-10 pitches and almost every one went like 33-37 yards. I was like "hmmm, that's helpful - might want to remember that."

And it has helped. Having a 35 yard pitch from off the green has been extremely helpful for me. There are so many instances if I miss a green where this stock shot will at least settle my ball on the green somewhere.

But other than that there are so many things to work on around the green. So many things affect the types of chips/pitches you need to hit. Type of grass, is the grass dewy?, is it sitting down or up, are you on an uphill/downhill lie, how much grass/fringe do you have to go through?, are you short-sided or long? Is the green fast or slow? A bad player doesn't have to master these shots but you better have an idea of what to do. Do you need to open the face a bit and swing harder? Can you really commit to that? Are you confident in pulling that shot off? How does putting through the fringe affect your speed? Can you putt through short grass off the green and know how hard to hit it? If your ball is resting on the collar of the fringe what club will you use? Do you know how to make good contact with the putter on this? How does your putter backswing get affected by brushing against the fringe/grass? Does it throw you off mentally? Distracting? Is the green crowned or a bowl?

I hear a lot about how from inside 150 is so important but really you can go further and say inside 50 is defcon 5 level importance. Especially since from outside chipping range your pitches will all be partial shots. If you hit your lob wedge 60-80 yards or whatever then the pitches from like 20-50 yards require a "fabricated" shot as it were. You better have some numbers you know you can hit the middle of the green.

Bad players in my range (20+ hc) will just be in this area so often. We're not worried about getting up and down from 30-50 out but we want to get on the green and 2 putt for bogey for SURE. And on all these par 4s I'm just not going to be hitting the greens but pretty rarely so on 10 holes a round I'll probably be in this range. Not to mention on probably 3 of the 4 par 3s. And the short par 5s if I hit 2 good shots (OR 3 bad OK ones).

If you don't have confidence in shots ranging from putts on the collar to 50 yards out it sucks. Because players at my level run into these SO often. And alarms are going off in my head to not light strokes on fire.

Don't know why I wrote all this I've been drinking a bit but man this stuff really is important. I remember when I first started playing golf an old man starter on a crummy course told us before we teed off "you know someone once told me the shots inside 150 are the important ones." and I thought wtf those aren't hard those aren't even far away. Of course now I know he was dead right. And taken further, shots within 50 yards are monumentally important. If you spent like 95% of your time practicing the hundreds of combos around the green it wouldn't be too much.

I met this new member at our club a few weeks ago and played with him twice. He get's 16 strokes a side, and needs them shooting 57 and 58 the times I played with him. Like many hacks he has a very poor short game and is a lousy putter. However what was really obvious is he had no reason hitting a driver off the tee. He has a really strong grip and pull-hooked practically every tee shot he hit. At my suggestion he ditched the driver last week , and weakened his grip. Using just three-wood, dude hit every fairway and carded a respectable 48 for a net 32 taking the low net, ( and capping my only birdie of the round with a par with two pops. ) By hitting the fairway it gave him much more confidence with his approaches, chips and putting. His card was bogey,bogey,bogey,par,double,triple,double,par,dou ble. I bet he drops ten strokes off his 34 cap this summer if he continues to leave the driver at home.

Some day I will figure out how to hit a pitch (or even a chip) off a ****ing bare lie.

Use a club with minimal bounce. Try and hit the back of the ball and the hard pan simultaneously. Refrain from opening the club this increases bounce making it easier to thin the shot.

Yeah I'd suggest turning the clubface to different angles and make note of the results. If you're struggling that bad you're likely not using the bounce correctly which is usually a setup problem or you need to get a different bounce.

My suggestion, and I suck, but when I am faced with this, I pretend I am at the range, on a mat, and how I would basically need to pick the ball.